PATTERNS NORM EXPERIENCES JUST AS NOISE MAKES NUMB — JAKOB FORSTER
STUDIO VISIT
· May 23, 2021
Jakob Forster’s studio, 2021. Courtesy of the artist
I try to connect with things that intersect my daily paths.
At the moment, I’m working on an archive of representations and interpretations of products which make other things disappear, which are meant to disappear themselves after being used, or which help somewhere in the process. My paintings hence flirt with the act of conservation. But they also comprise speculative storytelling, exaggeration and play.
Patterns norm experiences just as noise makes numb. Things thus slip away and out of conscience as mechanically as our fingers snap and tap. I like to dwell here with them, and I tighten my grip. Touch is when and how it begins. I choose my material collaborators carefully. Usually I get to know a thing, pattern or tool before conceiving it as a work. The rough and, when held, lukewarm surface of a coffee cup ‘to go’ for instance, whose thin walls increase the likelihood of being dropped if too hot, and which turns soft and thus becomes an incapable container after one drink. Or sanding paper which dissolves under one’s influence not unlike the coffee cup. If painting is a mesh of layers, my paintings start with the experiences embodied in the supports I pick.
Jakob Forster, Untitled, 2020, 50 x 50 cm, oil on perspex. Courtesy of the artist
Material samples: heatogram on paper on linen table cloth. Courtesy of the artist
Jakob Forster’s studio, 2021. Courtesy of the artist
Jakob Forster, Untitled (Promised Land series), 2020, 45 x 75 cm, acrylics on doormat mounted on board. Courtesy of the artist
Artist oil paint (ultramarine). Courtesy of the artist
Jakob Forster, Germany (‘to go’ series), 2020, detail, artist watercolors, encaustic paint, acrylic ink and beeswax on bleached linen. Courtesy of the artist
JAKOB FORSTER (b. 1991, Munich) graduated from Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, where he lives and works. Next to his own practice he programmes a home-run gallery with focus on positions intersecting painting. His work was presented in the parallel programme of Manifesta 10 in Saint Petersburg as well as at KUMA Museum in Seoul, Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, BWA Wrocław Główny, and many other venues.
www.jakob-forster.de
